A convicted axe murderer who spent more than half a century behind bars in Manitoba has lost his day parole after prison officials discovered he had been falsely claiming Métis ancestry for years in order to access Indigenous programming and culturally-based rehabilitation services.

According to a newly released decision from the Parole Board of Canada, 74-year-old Jack Wayne Bender admitted he fabricated his Indigenous identity while participating in Indigenous correctional programs and working with elders inside prison. The board revoked his day parole on May 5 after the deception came to light.

“You have maintained this deception for several years,” the board wrote, criticizing Bender’s dishonesty and lack of transparency throughout the parole process.

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Bender has been incarcerated since 1974 for one of Manitoba’s most brutal murders. Court records show Bender and an accomplice robbed two men, drove them to a secluded area near Lockport, tied them up and attacked them with an axe. One man was killed. The other somehow survived long enough to escape and reach a nearby farmhouse for help.

Despite that history, Bender was granted day parole last month after officials cited his participation in mental health treatment and what they believed was a reconnection with his Indigenous heritage. He had completed Indigenous-focused correctional programming and worked extensively with prison elders.

But the entire foundation of that rehabilitation narrative collapsed once Correctional Service Canada learned Bender was not Métis at all.

Corrections officials quickly asked the Parole Board to revoke his release, raising concerns not only about the false ancestry claim itself, but about Bender’s overall honesty and rehabilitation.

The board agreed.

It also noted Bender has shown a longstanding lack of interest in rehabilitation and still poses a risk to reoffend. During his decades behind bars, Bender assaulted a corrections officer and once escaped from a minimum-security prison.

Bender, held at the time as a minimum security inmate, was apprehended in 2019 after an escape attempt from a multilevel security institution in Laval.